ALBANY—State Senate Democrats will now meet as a conference on Tuesday evening, not on Saturday, as originally planned, according to three Senate Democratic sources.

The vote for the chamber's leadership takes place Wednesday.  read more »

The A.P., citing unnamed sources close to David Paterson, says Caroline Kennedy will get the Senate seat.

Not surprisingly, not all conservatives are happy.  read more »

2008 is over, and we'll stop flogging it in a short bit. But here's some more sad investment sales numbers for Manhattan, according to Bloomberg News:

Only 20 property sales worth $5 million or more closed in the fourth quarter and there were only 250 such deals in the year, according to Real Capital Analytics Inc., a New York- based real estate data service.

Fourth-quarter Manhattan transactions totaled $961 million, down 90 percent from the same period a year ago.

Dana Rubinstein ran down similarly dreadful numbers exactly one month ago in The Observer:  read more »

ALBANY—At a conference at which State Senator Marty Golden blasted parole officials for releasing a convicted murderer after 17 years, he didn't tone things down much when discussing now-former councilman Hiram Monserrate.  read more »

In the interest of drumming up maximal funds—or "transparency"—Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration Committee has released a chart (to be updated in real time) listing the names, employers, cities, and contributions of everyone who donates money to help make January 20 the best inauguration ever. The PIC won't be accepting any more than $50,000 per person, so it's not a good venue for show-offs, but we still spotted a lot of familiar names.  read more »

ALBANY—On a conference call this afternoon, David Paterson and four other governors outlined specifics for how they would like to see a $1 trillion federal stimulus shape up, adding a request for education aid.  read more »

COLONIE—David Paterson announced a $1 million cash infusion to food banks around the state, which officials say should help them get through the month of April.  read more »

The Village Voice has laid off legendary fashion writer Lynn Yaeger. [Fashionista]

Cathy Horyn gets to the bottom of what's wrong with Vogue. (Summary: The magazine has gotten sort of boring.) [NYT]

The clothing company established for Kira Plastinina, the 16-year-old daughter of Russian billionaire Sergei Plastinin, has officially filed for bankruptcy. [Bloomberg]

Natalie Massenet, the founder of high-end shopping site Net-a-Porter, is set to launch an outlet in Feburary. [The Cut via Telegraph]

What will be the next big thing in tech this year? How will start-ups grapple with the economic crisis? What's gonna happen to Google? Will Twitter take over the world?

Charlie O'Donnell, co-founder and CEO of career-building site Path 101, asked a bunch of tech-savvy New Yorkers and others to make a 7-second video of their predictions are for 2009. He spliced together the spots in the video posted above. Sam Lessin, CEO and co-founder of Drop.io, predicts a major personal data breach in the U.S.; Nate Westheimer, new leader of the New York Tech Meetup, predicted "location-based everything." Fred Wilson, managing partner of  read more »

Attention, Diablo Cody haters: Get your knives out! The stripper turned blogger turned Oscar winner is back this month with the Showtime series United States of Tara. The show doesn't premiere until Jan. 18 at 10 p.m. (following the derisible Secret Diary of a Call Girl), but you can watch the pilot episode right now in the VIP section of Showtime's Web site (use the password "TARA" when prompted).

Toni Collette stars as the titular Tara, a suburban housewife and mother of two who is affected with dissociative identity disorder--better known as multiple personalities. When the stresses of everyday life become too much for her to handle, Tara retreats into one of three other people: T., a slutty and drug-addled 15-year-old girl; Buck, a beer drinking, gun crazy trailer trash man; and Alice, a '50s housewife. Think Sybil but with intricately detailed costume changes.  read more »